I am the India Editor of Forbes Asia and Mumbai bureau manager of Forbes. Earlier, I was managing editor of Business India, among India's leading business magazines. I'm also a founding director of SatyaGyan Foundation, a non-profit that aims to alleviate poverty through education and employment.

India's Rich And Famous Rush To Snatch Piece Of New Soccer League

In a week that will see the start of the seventh season of the Indian Premier League, a cricket league that has been beset by scandals, a consortium comprising Reliance IndustriesReliance Industries, owned by Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest person, Rupert Murdoch’s Star India and sports agency IMG Worldwide, kicked off the Indian Super League, a new football competition that some hope could become the next big thing in Indian sports. The league matches will be played over three months starting September.

The line-up of bidders for the eight teams that were on offer included some of India’s very rich and very famous, from cricketers themselves to business people and Bollywood stars. Cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar snatched the franchise for south Indian city Kochi jointly with PVP Ventures, a listed firm that also owns a badminton team. Former cricket captain Sourav Ganguly got the franchise for his home city of Kolkata, along with tycoon Sanjeev Goenka who figures among India’s richest, and Spain’s Atletico Madrid as part of the buyer consortium.

The Pune team went to property tycoons Kapil and Dheeraj Wadhawan, once among India’s richest, and Salman Khan, among Bollywood’s highest paid actors. Other Bollywood stars in the fray were Ranbir Kapoor and John Abraham who got the Mumbai and Guwahati teams respectively.

Media baron Kalanithi Maran’s Sun Group which also owns a cricket team, was the sole winner for Bangalore. Billionaire Venugopal Dhoot who has long nursed ambitions to own a cricket team, bagged the franchise for Goa along with Dattaraj Salgaokar, Ambani’s brother-in-law, and another local businessman. Dhoot said that he sees football gaining popularity among young people. His nephew Saurabh told me that they see it as “the sport of the future.

But football has a lot of catching up to do before it enters the high-stakes league of cricket. The teams were sold for between $2 million to $3 million for 10 years, with Kolkata believed to be the most expensive. By comparison, Maran paid $80 million in 2012 for the Hyderabad cricket team for five years. Sports analyst and commentator Ayaz Memon said that starting with the IPL as role model, the league format seems to have found favor in the country with similar leagues for badminton and hockey being formed. He believes that the rush for bids denotes more of an ego-play as owning a team has become somewhat of a status symbol among the moneyed class.

Unlike cricket, a game that has its share of local mega-stars, football has no big names to boast of as yet. The league’s success, said Memon, will depend on the international stars it’s able to reel in and new domestic ones that emerge: “It doesn’t have that cachet yet.” Notably, London-based steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal who owns a one third stake in English football club Queens Park Rangers stayed away from this auction in his home country.

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